What Are Anchovies and Where Are They Found?

Anchovies are small, oily, saltwater fish often marinated in salt and vegetable oil. While found globally, the largest commercial catches come from the Pacific coast of South America (especially the Peruvian anchovy fishery), followed by waters near Japan and European Mediterranean regions like Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Turkey.

They have deep culinary roots in the Mediterranean, where ancient civilizations like the Greeks and Romans heavily prized them and preserved them with salt. Spain produces the best anchovies in the world, specifically from the nutrient-rich waters of the Cantabrian Sea and coastal towns like Santoña and Laredo.

Spain was an anchovy superpower during the Roman Empire, which supplied the whole empire with garum fish sauce. Garum was a sauce that condensed the taste of salted, fermented anchovies into a strong fish sauce very similar to the fish sauce used in East Asian cuisine.

In Spain, they are also very popular marinated in vinegar. Fresh anchovies (boquerones in Spanish) also serve as ingredients for countless traditional recipes. Dried salted anchovies are also very popular in Asian cuisine, where they add a strong umami flavour especially in broths.

But anchovies became most famous as pizza topping and became part of popular Italian culture.

In Spanish cuisine, salted anchovy fillets are most often used on their own or as a premium topping of various salads. They are served either flat or shaped into rolls, sometimes with some capers inside.

The combination with olives or other pickled vegetables is very popular. Anchovies are often used to decorate pintxos, small canapés of various combinations – from the simplest tortilla de patatas to elaborate multi-layered creations, in which you can find mayonnaise, shrimps, eggs, olives, roasted peppers and anchovy in one sandwich. Spreads made of roasted peppers and anchovies are also popular.

In Italian cuisine anchovies are used in various recipes with pasta, where they complement and deepen the taste of the sauces. Anchovy sauces also often accompany meat dishes especially with parsley, garlic, tomatoes, capers, etc.

You can eat a small number of anchovies daily, but due to their high salt content, you should limit them to about 1 to 2 ounces (or roughly 5 to 10 salted fillets) per day.

Is it safe to eat the bones in anchovies?

Yes, in fact, those tiny wispy bones threading their way through the anchovies in your can are left behind precisely because they are completely safe to consume and, once cooked, undetectable. Once cooked the bones melt away, leaving only their deliciously-concentrated, salty-savory flavor behind.

Because anchovy production is already so laborious and the rest of the bones are so small and tender (made even softer by canning), they are left in and actually add to the overall taste and nutrition (which includes Omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin A, selenium, calcium, and iron) inherent in these oily, umami-packed fish.

The larger spinal bones in these fish have already been expertly hand-removed in places like the Amalfi coast of Italy or Cantabria, Spain among others.

Content for this question contributed by Cameron Myers, resident of Omaha, Douglas County, Nebraska, USA